nealcassady




I'm doing 24 things
 

nealcassady's Life List

  1. 1. Read Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century
    63 entries . 388 cheers
    557 people
  2. 2. Read Jim Clark's 50 Overlooked GLBT Fiction Authors
    3 entries . 41 cheers
    3 people
  3. 3. Post Book Lists For Others Which I Have No Intention of Trying to Read Myself
    38 entries . 82 cheers
    1 person
  4. 4. Read Dr. Peter Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
    4 entries . 60 cheers
    22 people
  5. 5. Read all of James Purdy's Works and Make People Aware of One of America's Great Novelists
    5 entries . 19 cheers
    1 person
  6. 6. Read Harold Bloom's The Western Canon
    2 entries . 24 cheers
    2 people
  7. 7. Read Canadian
    12 entries . 67 cheers
    1 person
  8. 8. Cars Off Earth Now
    39 entries . 83 cheers
    2 people
  9. 9. Promote
    2 entries . 36 cheers
    8 people
  10. 10. Read The Publishing Triangle's Our Visitors' 87 Best Gay & Lesbian Novels
    3 entries . 8 cheers
    1 person
  11. 11. Call on Amnesty International to add the state of California to its list of human rights abusers.
    2 team members . 2 entries . 77 cheers
    2 people
  12. 12. Read Jim Clark's 100 Overlooked GLBT Non-Fiction Authors
    1 entry . 28 cheers
    2 people
  13. 13. Read the Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Lesbian & Gay Non-Fiction Books
    3 entries . 39 cheers
    1 person
  14. 14. Lose Weight
    18 entries . 270 cheers
    36,262 people
  15. 15. Read Modern Library's Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of the 20th Century
    1 entry . 115 cheers
    4 people
  16. 16. Read the Daily Telegraph's 1899 List of the Top 100 Novels of All Time
    1 entry . 86 cheers
    7 people
  17. 17. Read The Daily Telegraph's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century
    2 entries . 49 cheers
    3 people
  18. 18. Read The Observer's Top 100 Novels of All Time
    1 entry . 84 cheers
    6 people
  19. 19. Read the Donald Barthelme Syllabus
    1 entry . 34 cheers
    9 people
  20. 20. Read Brian Kitely’s Highly Arbitrary List of Recommended Books
    1 entry . 48 cheers
    1 person
  21. 21. Read All the Books I Own
    77 entries . 509 cheers
    1,138 people
  22. 22. Read Erica Jong's Top 100 Twentieth Century Novels by Women
    3 entries . 94 cheers
    4 people
  23. 23. Read The Publishing Triangle's 100 Best Gay & Lesbian Novels
    3 entries . 63 cheers
    1 person
  24. 24. Read the Nobel Prize Winners in Literature
    1 entry . 10 cheers
    1 person
Recent entries
read all the books I own (read all 77 entries…)
Dead Certainties by Simon Schama (1992) 1 week ago

Schama uses the novelist’s tools to tell two stories which demonstrate the difficulty of arriving at a definitive version of any historical event. The first is the death of General James Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, and the subsequent mythology built up around him by, among others, Benjamin West, who painted the very famous The Death of General Wolfe (1770) and the American historian Francis Parkman, who wrote about Wolfe. Schama shows us many different versions of Wolfe: was he hero or invalid? Whose interpretation is correct? Schama includes imagined scenes in his story, which are based on his careful research.

The second story is of the murder in Boston of Francis Parkman’s brother George by a Harvard professor named John Webster. Again, the focus is on the many different versions of the murder itself presented at Webster’s murder trial and the variety of impressions of Webster and Parkman among the citizens of Boston.

Schama is a very good writer, and this is an interesting examination of the historical process, of the fictionalizing tendency in all story-telling, whether fact-based or not. Nevertheless, I’m not sure, after reading it, why he wrote it. Two interesting stories, connected by the Parkman family, but nothing terribly urgent or profound in the material communicated. Still, worth reading.



read all the books I own (read all 77 entries…)
One More 3 weeks ago

Home of the Gentry/Turgenev (1859)



read all the books I own (read all 77 entries…)
Three 3 weeks ago

Bay Window Bohemia/Oscar Lewis (1956)
The Zen Koan/Isshu Miura & Ruth Fuller Sasaki (1965)
A Death in Jerusalem/Kati Marton (1994)



See all entries ...


 

I want to:
43 Things Login